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Failure

I started writing this post back in September and then shelved it in my drafts. I am once more reminded about it. In the past few days I have been picking up on hints that talk to me about success and failure. I dug this old draft up and tweaked it. Hopefully this is something someone needs to hear. If you ever need to talk about failing. I am able to lend a helpful ear and share stories.

|ˈfālyər|
noun
1 lack of success : an economic policy that is doomed to failure | the failures of his policies.
• an unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing : bad weather had resulted in crop failures.
• lack of success in passing an examination or test : exam failure.
• a grade that is not high enough to pass an examination or test.
2 the omission of expected or required action : their failure to comply with the basic rules.
• a lack or deficiency of a desirable quality : a failure of imagination.
3 the action or state of not functioning : symptoms of heart failure | an engine failure.
• a sudden cessation of power.
• the collapse of a business.

Failure has been on my mind, lately; the way some people keep other people down by belittling them. As I thought about writing I did a quick Google search, but all I found about failure was in correlation to business. In the 50 pages I looked at I could not find one entry that dealt with personal failure. It seems like no one likes to talk about when we don’t succeed. I’m going to try to change that.

Most people fear failure… due to that a lot of people play it safe and don’t do most of thing they want to; be it, auditioning for a play/acting job, asking someone out, trying out for the team, following ones dream, etc. People rationalize by saying that they are not good enough for a certain person, or part. They convince themselves that they are crazy by thinking they can’t do great things or be able to join the team.

I’m not sure why this is… I failed, but I really can’t call it that. Failing is not trying again. Edison once said,

“I did not fail 1000 times, I learned 1000 ways not to make a light bulb work.”

We need to learn from our mistakes. Taking a line from Batman Begins:

“Why do we fall down?”
“So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

You only fail if you stay down or if you don’t learn from your mistake. To err is human; no one is perfect. I, myself, have made tons of mistakes and will continue make a lot more, and I will fail– I will fail big, but I cannot succeed if I don’t try.

A lot of people don’t try because they think they will fail. It the biggest deterrence for people. Failure has been turned into somewhat of disgrace when in reality it’s a learning opportunity. People would rather settle for less than try something because of the possibility of failing, even though there might be a possibility of of success.

I am soon realizing that what might be looked down as failure is not really that. One fails when you give up on dreams. I might have been kick out of school, I was down but not out. We rave and brag about our successes, yet never talk about the times we’ve fail. It’s the part of life we try to hide so people think we are perfect. We need to start learning vulnerability and transparency. Maybe if we speak more about failure more people wouldn’t feel so bad when it happens. Because in reality we are all going to fail. Let’s share our experiences and help those around us. I understand that it’s a sore subject. Frankly it’s a very difficult topic to talk about. But it encourage the conversation, show those that it’s not really failing but a part of life.

We all fell the first time we tried to walk… but that didn’t stop us from getting back up to try to walk. I’m pretty sure we fell a lot while learning to walk.

Let’s start doing more things and not be afraid of failing. Let’s live life to the fullest, because we only get to live one life. We always plan for the future but tomorrow is not guaranteed.

The day you quit trying and concede to your demons is the day your soul dies.